Ending a Feud Between Allies By VICTOR CHA and KARL FRIEDHOFF

192 名前：名無しさん＠１３周年[sage] 投稿日：2013/11/19(火) 17:38:13.68 ID:lhq8QoUK0 [2/2]
元記事はこのリンクから読めます。もちろん英文。

Op-Ed Contributors
Ending a Feud Between AlliesBy VICTOR CHA and KARL FRIEDHOFF
Published: November 14, 2013

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/15/opinion/ending-a-feud-between-allies.html?_r=0
OP-ED CONTRIBUTORS
Ending a Feud Between Allies
By VICTOR CHA and KARL FRIEDHOFF
Published: November 14, 2013

WASHINGTON — Last month Japanese officials once again visited the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, which many Asians deplore as a symbol of Japan’s militaristic past. Soon afterward, South Korea celebrated a law passed in 1900 that claimed sovereignty over the Liancourt Rocks, a disputed outcropping in the waters between the countries.
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Animosity between Japan and Korea is nothing new. But these latest events have taken relations to a new low and threaten American interests just as President Obama has embarked on a new effort to improve Washington’s position in the region.

Korean-Japanese tensions date from Japan’s invasion of the Korean Peninsula in the late 16th century. But the sorest point remains Japan’s 35-year occupation of Korea through the end of World War II. Japan may have lost the war, but the Japanese have maintained an attitude of national superiority over Koreans, which is matched by a Korean sense of resentment and outrage.

Under the pressures of the Cold War, and with a significant push by the United States, the two countries normalized political relations in 1965 and managed to forge security and economic cooperation. And while occasional flare-ups occurred over Japanese history textbooks or insensitive remarks by politicians, this cooperation extended well into the post-Cold War years.

This time is different. The latest strains come after a series of relations-eroding developments: The two countries have not renewed a currency-swap agreement, have shelved free-trade talks and have failed to complete two defense agreements.

At the recent Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit meeting in Indonesia, the South Korean president, Park Geun-hye, and the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, were seated next to each other but did not talk. When the American defense secretary, Chuck Hagel, raised the importance of Seoul-Tokyo cooperation in a private meeting with Ms. Park, she dressed him down with a history lesson.

Meanwhile, South Koreans are nervous over Mr. Abe’s plans for a stronger Japanese military, which they fear could be used for offensive operations (currently prohibited by the Japanese Constitution).

Should these tensions continue, and deepen, they could undermine President Obama’s “pivot” to Asia. Without defense cooperation between South Korea and Japan, the United States cannot respond effectively to North Korea’s nuclear and missile provocations.

While the trilateral alliance does not seek to contain China, the absence of cooperation among the three like-minded allies on everything from cybersecurity to missile defense inhibits America’s capacity to shape China’s rise in constructive ways.

And the United States cannot work as effectively on a host of global issues, including climate change, international development, nuclear security and free trade without the cooperation of these two major economies.

In the past, Washington forged cooperation by more or less forcing the countries to do its bidding. But the perceived balance between the countries has shifted significantly, especially from the Korean perspective.

After decades of stagnation, Japan is awakening under a reinvigorated prime minister who has stimulated the economy and pushed national security reforms, boldly claiming, “Japan is back.”

During Japan’s stagnation, however, South Korea transformed itself. Not only did it become a complex democracy, but it is now the world’s 15th largest economy, with companies that outperform their Japanese rivals. South Korea now views Japan as a declining power.

The difficult relations between the two countries are partly rooted in the expediencies of a 1945 peace settlement engineered by the United States, which eventually made Japan the bulwark of American Cold War security in Asia.

The solution today, however, is not to rewrite yesterday’s agreements. The United States must continue to press for pragmatic cooperation, but with a new approach that focuses on three issues.

For one, the United States should recognize that even while Asian governments make difficulties over perceived historical slights, their publics care less and less about them. Our polling research in South Korea, for example, shows that only 8 percent of those questioned rank historical and territorial issues as the primary determinant of their voting behavior.

South Korean leaders have typically cited public disgust over such slights as a reason closer cooperation with Japan won’t work. Clearly that’s wrong — and the United States can push them to stop using it as a crutch.

Washington should also push Tokyo to be more open about its foreign policy goals. Japan must reach out to its neighbors, perhaps through a special envoy, to discuss the intentions behind Mr. Abe’s defense plans. Doing so would improve regional trust and most likely lead to mutually beneficial defense cooperation.

Finally, the United States should encourage Japanese good faith in resolving the biggest historical sticking point, comfort women. The practice of conscripting young girls as sexual slaves for the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II requires a formal acknowledgment and apology. Mr. Abe should also meet with some of the survivors.

While Asian publics do not rate historical issues as highly as politicians believe, anger on this particular issue is universal. Japan’s long-running practice of accepting the existence of such practices but denying the government’s involvement irreparably stains the country’s reputation in the international court of public opinion.

The United States cannot “pivot” to Asia while remaining silent on the historical issues that most vex the region. Resolving these tensions would not only demonstrate America’s influence but would also remove a barrier to the further expansion of American power in the region.

Victor Cha, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a professor at Georgetown, was the director of Asian affairs for the National Security Council from 2004 to 2007. Karl Friedhoff is a program officer at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul and a Mansfield Foundation U.S.-Korea Nexus scholar.

INTERNATIONAL NEW YORK TIMES

A version of this op-ed appears in print on November 15, 2013, in The International New York Times.



http://www.j-cast.com/2013/11/19189375.html?p=all

「米国は日本に慰安婦謝罪を促すべき、安倍首相は元慰安婦と面会せよ」NYタイムズ系列紙
2013/11/19 15:35

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米ニューヨーク・タイムズ系列紙「インターナショナル・ニューヨーク・タイムズ」は2013年11月14日、慰安婦問題について、「米国は日本に謝罪を促すべき」とする論考を掲載した。筆者は朝鮮半島情勢の専門家として知られるビクター・チャ米ジョージタウン大教授、政治学者のカール・フリートホーフ氏。
日韓確執が米国のアジア戦略の障害となっているとの立場から、「最大の歴史問題」である慰安婦問題の解決のため、日本が「正式な承認と謝罪」、「安倍晋三首相による元慰安婦女性との面会」などを受け入れるよう、米国が後押しする必要があるとしている。一方で韓国側が国内の「反日」を理由に対話を拒むことも批判し、やはり米国の働きかけが必要だと論じた。



2 名前：名無しさん＠１３周年[sage] 投稿日：2013/11/19(火) 17:08:46.16 ID:UeGc7FXY0
http://iamkoream.com/a-brilliant-rivalry-victor-cha-and-david-kang/


Victor Chaはどう見てもコリアン

A Brilliant Rivalry: Victor Cha and David Kang
Author: Julie Ha
Posted: November 5th, 2010
Filed Under: Back Issues , BLOG , October 2010
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David Kang (left) with Victor Cha, outside USCs Korean Studies Institute.

In an age of partisan politics and one-upmanship, “hawk” Victor Cha and “dove” David Kang—two top Korea experts—have written their own counter-narrative.

by Julie Ha
photographs by Eric Sueyoshi



Could you script a more perfect rivalry?

Victor D. Cha, cast as The Hawk, suspects North Korea wants to be treated like a nuclear weapons state. Juxtaposed with him is David C. Kang, The Dove, who thinks the North is going nuclear because it’s insecure over a U.S. pre-emptive threat. Enter, stage right, Cha, in favor of coercive diplomacy through negotiations and sanctions. He brandishes a stick. From stage left, Kang, who wants to open the isolated nation to capitalism and Western ideas, leads by dangling a carrot.

Figurative analogies aside, Cha and Kang are, in fact, highly positioned players on the real-world foreign policy stage. Formidable opponents with divergent opinions on how the U.S. should respond to North Korea’s nuclear weapons ambition, an issue that has plagued this nation for two decades, each has assumed an important role in government policy formation and scholarly research.

An international relations professor at Georgetown University, Cha formerly served as a key advisor on North Korea policy to then-President George W. Bush. Kang, who teaches international relations and business at the University of Southern California, has consulted for various government agencies since the Clinton administration.

Dubbed by one senior scholar as “the best young political scientists who study Korea,” both men have emerged in the last several years as two of the nation’s leading public policy commentators on Korea issues. When South Korea blamed a North Korean torpedo for the March sinking of its naval ship, killing 46 sailors, NPR invited Cha on-air to explain possible motives. When the United Nations Security Council came out with an ambiguous statement that didn’t quite condemn the sinking, the New York Times asked Kang to interpret its meaning.

To play up this notion of a rivalry, the scholars boast tit-for-tat resumés. Each has published three books and play prominent roles as ambassadors in Asian scholarship, with Kang directing USC’s Korean Studies Institute and Cha leading the Asian studies program at Georgetown.

The contemporaries have followed parallel paths, dating back to their heritage as American-born sons of early-wave Korean immigrants. They were back-to-back Fulbright scholars in Korea, where they also studied at the same research institute. In fact, it was while a Fulbright that Kang, a grad student from Berkeley, first got wind of his Columbia University-based counterpart, who had left within weeks of his arrival.

David Kang

“So I show up at the Fulbright office and the research institute, and other Korean Americans are like, ‘Victor Cha, Victor Cha, Victor Cha,’” described Kang, 45, in a mock fan tone. “They loved the guy. So I hated him before I ever met him.”

Cha, too, had been apprised of his liberal colleague before their first encounter. “I heard there was this young communist being trained,” quipped the 48-year-old.

The pair would even have dueling hawk-vs.-dove op-eds published by the New York Times in 2002 exactly one Sunday apart.

But, as it turns out, this ideal contest is not what it seems. These would-be opponents are defying trend in this age of hyperpartisan politics and going against the grain in an academic world that often sees scholars trying to outbuild the other’s empire. Fifteen years ago, they decided to write their own narrative, and it goes something like this:

“Our ideas don’t necessarily agree,” said Cha during a joint interview with Kang, “so we debate.”

“And learn things from each other,” added Kang.

“And also push each other,” said Cha. “You look at these top people in their fields, and some of them don’t even talk to each other.”

“It’s so self-defeating,” said Kang.

After first meeting in the mid-1990s, they instead made an informal pact to join forces, and their personal decision has yielded important public benefits. In 2003 the pair co-authored a highly lauded book that took a bipartisan approach to the contentious topic of dealing with a nuclear North Korea (with an updated version planned) and, earlier this year, launched a research project on long-term Korean reunification issues geared toward aiding policymakers.

Both collaborations speak to the scholars’ shared desire to reframe the way decision makers and the general public consider one of the most important foreign policy issues of our time: achieving peace on the Korean peninsula. It also happens to be an ambitious vision that perhaps helped this seeming rivalry give way to a brilliant alliance.

* * *

Kang recalled a conversation he had with his conservative counterpart over drinks after an academic conference in 1995. Both were assistant professors at the time. “We were ‘angry young men’ trying to make our mark on the world,” described Kang, whose animated style of speaking contrasts with Cha’s mild-mannered demeanor. “And Victor says, ‘You know, the field is so big, there’s so much that needs to be done. We could spend the rest of our careers competing with each other, but if we cooperate, we’ll both be way better off.’”

Their competing 2002 op-eds in the New York Times, ironically, marked their first public collaboration. They had conspired to write them in response to events from both sides of the DMZ that were sounding alarms in Washington.

That October, North Korea revealed a secret nuclear weapons program, prompting the U.S. to accuse Pyongyang of violating their 1994 nonproliferation agreement. Meanwhile, the complex and sometimes tenuous alliance between the United States and South Korea felt quite fragile, as South Koreans led protests over the acquittal of two American soldiers involved in an armored vehicle accident that killed two Korean schoolgirls.

Washington seemed to take it as a snub when the South’s voters that December chose the left-leaning Roh Moo-hyun as their next president over a candidate considered more pro-American.

Victor Cha

“We had a real crisis,” recalled Cha, who still consults for the government and serves as an advisor at the D.C.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank. “David and I were talking about it, and I had one view, which was a little bit more conservative, and he had another view, which was a little bit more liberal. And we said, ‘All right, let’s write op-eds on it.’ We were young academics just dipping our feet into this.”

Kang believed the North, by then identified as an “axis of evil” member by President George W. Bush, had genuine security concerns that the U.S. might attack the isolated nation. In his op-ed, he urged a deeply changed American policy that provided security guarantees to the North and normalized political relations between the two nations, still technically at war. He also interpreted South Korea’s apparent anti-Americanism as a sign of anxiety that the U.S. might undo the gains both Koreas had made during a decade of “sunshine policy” engagement.

Cha countered that until North Korea complied with the nonproliferation agreement, a policy of isolation and containment was justified. In his editorial, he issued some tough love for South Korea, who he thought was wrongly blaming American policies, rather than North Korea’s “truculence,” for the threat of war on the peninsula.

Despite their disagreements, the scholars also commiserated about the lack of informed public discourse on the nuclear issue. Pundits and ideologues who merely dismissed the North and leader Kim Jong-il as “evil” and “insane” tended to dominate the debate playing out on cable news stations and newspaper op-ed pages. Kang recalled some from the
far right camp even talked about possible U.S. surgical strikes in the North. (In March 2003, U.S. forces would descend on Iraq, another axis member.)

The Korea specialists saw it as their duty to push for a nuanced understanding of the true sources of North Korea’s behavior and pragmatic U.S. strategies to deal with it. They understood the stakes were too high to do anything less: Should war break out on the peninsula, the estimated costs would be one million casualties, including 52,000 U.S. military casualties, and $1 trillion in material damage, according to one U.S. military official’s assessment.

In light of such stakes, they tried to move a constructive debate forward with their 2003 book Nuclear North Korea: A Debate on Engagement Strategies, which like their op-eds, presented their he said/he said arguments in alternating chapters.

“We thought it would be a good idea to do something together where you have two people informed on the topic, who have different views and still could have a rational discussion about it,” said Cha, “not just talking…”

“Talking past each other,” Kang finished.

Later, Ashton Carter, former assistant secretary of defense for international security in the Clinton administration, would call Nuclear North Korea “the most thoughtful and analytical treatment of practical strategies for dealing with North Korea that exists in print.” Copies of it could be found on the plane taking then-Secretary of State Colin Powell to Korea and in the hands of then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.

Charles “Jack” Pritchard, president of the Korea Economic Institute and a former U.S. special envoy for North Korean negotiations, has worked with both Cha and Kang, whom he called “top-notch.” He said their book was “refreshing” in that the debating scholars also wrote shared chapters with their points of agreement. Cha and Kang, considered moderates in their views, took opposite directions to the same conclusion—that, as reprehensible as the actions of the Kim Jong-il regime were, its behavior was comprehensible, even rational, and therefore, there was a path for diplomacy. They commonly urged Washington to pursue some form of engagement with the North. For Kang, it could pave a gradual path to regime change; for Cha, engagement could be used to test whether Kim Jong-il would truly disarm.

The co-authors also agreed that the North Korean regime is not sustainable and that a unified Korea was inevitable. Given this, they said it would be beneficial for the U.S. to redefine its alliance with South Korea based on their shared principles, and not just their common threats.

A 13-city book tour gave them a chance to share their views with a diverse audience, from foreign policy followers to listeners of talk radio.

“The most important thing was for there to be two people talking about this in a very rational, educated way that the general [public] could understand,” said Cha, “so they wouldn’t think [North Korea] is just a crazy country, period.”

* * *

Cha would go from writing and teaching about U.S. foreign policy to advising the president from the White House—three years he would spend sleeping with a Blackberry on his chest. As an Asian specialist for Bush’s National Security Council between 2004 and 2007, he was responsible for policy to South Korea, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Island nations.

He would have a chance to harness his deep knowledge about Korea when he became the deputy negotiator at the North Korea nuclear talks,assisting then-chief negotiator Christopher Hill. Although hawks are known for pressure tactics, Cha is credited with convincing Bush to allow bilateral talks with the North as a way to test the regime’s intentions, marking a major shift in the Republican administration’s policy.

The once self-professed ivory tower academic would also take his first trip to North Korea in April of 2007, joining New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson to negotiate the return of the remains of U.S. servicemen killed during the Korean War. After three days in Pyongyang, they drove to the DMZ and then took a helicopter into Seoul, its skyline replete with high-rises.

“I’d seen the Seoul skyline a million times, but I remember at that point, I really felt it,” described the New York-born Cha, whose late father studied business at Columbia and mother trained at Juilliard. “I thought, these Koreans in the South and I are not genetically any different from those in the North. It’s not like people in the North can’t do the same things; it’s just politics that have prevented them from doing it.

“And I knew all the stats—I can recite all the demographic data on why North Korean children who are my sons’ ages are a few inches shorter or many pounds lighter than South Koreans. But that one experience of having just driven from Pyongyang, past these completely barren fields, and then to view Seoul from the sky … I felt both anger and sadness at the same time.”

* * *

When Kang says things like the United States, not just North Korea, failed to uphold its end of the bargain as part of the 1994 nuclear accord, falling behind on opening a promised light-water reactor, for example, he notes that to some, it sounds like “you’re apologizing for or defending North Korea.”

“It’s a heinous, hideous regime, which I, like anyone, would like to see disappear,” said Kang. “If North Korea is afraid of capitalism and afraid if more of its people learn about the outside world, the weaker the regime gets, then we should saturate them with capitalism. We should be doing everything we can to trade with them. North Koreans learn about the outside world, and incomes rise. That would be the best, most easy transition.

“I’ve always believed that if you solve the North Korea problem—the economics, the openness of the culture—that’s a way to make progress on the nuclear issue.” The Northern California-reared academic grew up hearing stories from his physicist father about the latter’s hometown in Chongju, in what is now North Korea, from which his family fled in 1947. “One of my biggest dreams would be to take Dad and drive from Seoul up to see his home,” said Kang, whose mother is white and notably has studied Korean language and history.

Although he’s done briefings for the State Department, CIA and National Security Agency, the former Dartmouth professor says he cannot picture himself working directly for the government, as Cha did. Kang has leaned more toward academia, and in fact, while his peer was working for the White House, Kang taught as a visiting political science professor at Stanford, wrote a book about China as a rising power in East Asia and was elevated to full professor at Dartmouth.

Upon returning to Georgetown in 2007, Cha apparently took notice.

“I was only an associate professor, I was a book behind him, and he had another article published in one of these top political science journals,” recalled Cha, as Kang erupted into laughter.

“My wife said, ‘But you just worked for three years in the White House.’ I said, ‘That means nothing in academia.’”
The former Bush advisor could have continued working solely in the policy world, but Kang’s scholarly accomplishments helped nudge him to re-engage fully in academia.

“I think I push [David] to do more in the public policy realm,” said Cha, whose third, even-scoring book incidentally was published in 2009. “It’s a collaborative relationship, but we also push each other.”

* * *

It’s also a relationship that sometimes operates on telepathy. About two years ago, after Kim Jong-il suffered a stroke, speculation that the North Korean regime would collapse abounded. Without coordinating with each other, Cha, in an editorial for a Korean newspaper, and Kang, at a forum in D.C., raised the same concern: Although governments, including the U.S. and South Korea, have prepared short-term military contingency plans should the North collapse, no one was analyzing long-term social, economic and political issues associated with the integration of two vastly different countries.

“Whether [reunification] happens tomorrow or 50 years from now, thinking about these issues is important,” said Kang. “The day after, we’ll have to deal with internal migration: Will 22 million North Koreans want to move to China and South Korea, or will they stay [where they are]? How do you deal with that, with public health [issues]? If a ‘North Korea’ disappears, what happens to its treaties?”

“What do you do with the North Korean military?” added Cha, referring to its one million-person army.

This year, the scholars launched The Korea Project, a research initiative focused on examining these complex issues. Over two days in August at USC, they hosted a private conference, matching Korea scholars with experts who have worked on such issues as transitional justice in South Africa, reform of state-owned enterprises in China, resolving ethnic tensions in the former Yugoslavia and post-war reconstruction in Iraq, to see what lessons might be useful for the peninsula. Cha and Kang said many people tend to focus on the German reunification model, but the case of Iraq after the U.S. invasion may
be more instructive.

“One of the lessons from Iraq was that the lack of Iraqi voices [in the rebuilding effort] was a huge mistake,” Kang said, referencing comments made by a conference attendee involved in Iraq reconstruction efforts. “In this [reunification] process, you need to have North Korean voices, not just leaders, but finding out at the village level, what does the community need.
“We know from the post-war Iraq example that no planning leads to chaos.”

By the end of what they anticipate will be a three-year project, funded in its first year by the Korea Foundation, an independent organization affiliated with the Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Cha and Kang plan to have a set of papers covering problems and solutions on a wide set of reunification issues and tasks for Korea, the United States and other concerned parties in the region.

Cha said the government doesn’t have the time to do this kind of research, though when the time comes, policymakers will need the data to help make sound decisions. “If [reunification] happens, it will be the most important change in Asia since the revolution in China,” he said. “Imagine a peninsula with no tension, how positive that is.”

* * *

The collaborators’ approach to contentious foreign policy issues appears to be setting a new countertrend in an age of separate cable news stations for the political left and right. Borrowing from Nuclear North Korea’s bipartisan playbook, two other scholars present their dueling views in India, Pakistan, and the Bomb: Debating Nuclear Stability in South Asia, released earlier this year.

Cha and Kang, in fact, will be reteaming on a revised edition of their trend-setting book, updating events since 2003—a period that has seen North Korea conduct its first nuclear test, heightened tensions on the peninsula and stalled nuclear talks with the U.S. As this issue was going to press, a North Korean foreign minister announced to the United Nations General Assembly that the regime plans to bolster its nuclear arsenal to deter a U.S. threat. Just a day earlier, at a major
political convention in Pyongyang, the youngest son of Kim Jong-il was elected to his first leadership posts in the ruling Workers’ Party. The move confirmed for many North Korea watchers that the ailing leader is paving a path for dynastic succession for son Kim Jong-eun.

Cha is also working on a separate book explaining the enigmatic North Korea for a general audience, while Kang releases his latest about international relations in Asia pre-19th century this month—marking each scholar’s fourth text, not that either is keeping track.

As strategic as this pair’s partnership has proven, a genuine friendship anchors it. They correspond almost daily and enjoy a chemistry that has them often finishing the other’s sentence and engaged in mutual ribbing. Cha attended Kang’s wedding and has met most of the latter’s extended family, though he joked he doesn’t let his colleague, who has one daughter, near his own wife and two sons.

John S. Park, a senior research associate on Northeast Asia issues at the United States Institute of Peace, recognized the relationship as unusual. “You look at how things are quite partisan today—people tend to focus on broad ways of negating or dismissing the other’s viewpoints,” Park said. “But [David and Victor] have maintained a friendship as well as a professional relationship. They can be frank about each other’s viewpoints and do so in a constructive manner.”

Noting their “shared goals of peaceful denuclearization and reunification of the peninsula,” he called their dynamic “old-school, in a good way.”

But don’t expect these old-school colleagues to share the same sports field. Cha called soccer, Kang’s personal obsession, the most boring to watch.

“Nine people running around chasing a white ball,” said the Georgetown Hoyas football fan dryly.

“Eleven,” Kang corrected his colleague.

Fittingly, the USC professor used a sports analogy to characterize his relationship with Cha: “We’re both used to competing really, really hard and then leaving it on the field.”

Indeed, perhaps what this pair shares is a rivalry, after all. But the way this hawk and dove play, there are no losers.